Security practices racialize suspect groups without anyone involved believing they are racist
Evidence
The racism at work here is not blatant or obvious. In fact, race does not enter the picture. Instead “security” practices are enacted which do the work of racializing suspect populations. These communities are then subject to a whole panoply of surveillance and criminalization, from arbitrary arrests, to indefinite detention, deportation, torture, solitary confinement, the use of secret evidence, and sentencing for crimes that white people would not be jailed for, such as speech, donations to charitable organizations, and other such acts considered “material support” for terrorism. Kundnani’s interviews with FBI and other security personnel shows that they do not believe they are racist; they think that they are doing their jobs to ensure safety and security. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 576
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Connects to the earlier surveillance chapter on 1960s racialization of Arabs, referenced in paragraph 575; also relates to Lawrence’s moral panic frame from the library.
- DEEPTHINKING: The insight that racism can operate through race-neutral ‘security’ procedures while perpetrators sincerely deny racism is a paradigm-level claim about how structural racism reproduces itself.
Related
- Racialization operates through ostensibly colorblind security practices, not overt racism (similarity 0.92)
- Color-blind security practices racialize without any actor believing they are racist (similarity 0.91)
- Color-blind security measures can turn religious groups into a race (similarity 0.81)
- Surveillance itself racializes target groups into a suspicious race (similarity 0.79)
- Racialized group surveillance weakens democracy and expands state power (similarity 0.78)